The Hangover – Review

Director Todd Phillips’ The Hangover is a solid comedy that is as smart as it is funny.  Unlike his previous fratboy flicks Old School and Road Trip, The Hangover works from beginning to end.  It’s well written, well acted, and stupid mother f**king funny.  

The film begins with a bride preparing for the most important day of her life, when she receives a phone call that could change her life forever.  Her soon-to-be-husband Doug (Justin Bartha) was misplaced by his best friends during his Vegas bachelor party.  The last thing his friends; Stu (Ed Helms), Phil (Bradley Cooper), and Alan (Zach Galifianakis) remember is sharing shots on the roof of Caesars Palace.  They wake up in their hotel room with a tiger, a chicken, a missing baby, a missing tooth, terrible hangovers, and a missing Doug.

The three hungover miscreants set out to retrace their steps in hopes of finding Doug and solving the many mysteries of their Vegas adventure.  As the events of the night before slowly reveal themselves they find out that they did things that they could never have imagined.

I wasn’t waiting for this flick to kick as much ass as it did.  I was sure that Zach was gonna rock, but when everyone in the flick rocked I was pleasantly surprised.  Even Mike Tyson was solid!  But the real star of this flick is the script.  All of the jokes work, and the flick has a story and isn’t just a bunch of set pieces and setups for skits that fall short.  These characters are flawed, real, and lovable.  They do and say things that middle-aged men would say and do, and none of the performances ever seem forced.

The Hangover is a laugh-out-loud tour de force of funny and most positively a killer film.

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